With the qualifier that I am someone who never participated in Usenet, I'd imagine the scale of the problem is a substantial change. As you point out, certain t

With the qualifier that I am someone who never participated in Usenet, I'd imagine the scale of the problem is a substantial change. As you point out, certain types of trolls almost always existed, but now instead of a single person performing the harassment it can often be thousands. The larger userbase also seems to have created a more diverse set of believes, which in turn creates more opportunities for conflicts, and more likely that someone will escalate these conflicts into harassment.